Cookie Policy

1. This Cookie Policy

1.1 This is the Cookie Policy (the "Policy") for www.acenden.com (the "Site"). The Site is operated by Acenden Limited ("we", "us" and "our"). For the purposes of the General Data Protection Regulation 2016, the Data Protection Act 2018 and Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 (together “the Data Protection Legislation”), we are a data processor of the information collected through this site.

1.2 We are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority to administer mortgages on behalf of third party lenders (the Lenders). Acenden Limited is the data processor in respect of personal data collected and otherwise processed via the Site on behalf of the Lenders. The Lenders are the data controllers in respect of your personal data. We may process your personal data in order to manage your agreement with your Lender and comply with legal and/or regulatory requirements and for legitimate business purposes (for example, in connection with the sale, disposal, merger, reorganisation or restructuring of any of our business or assets or those of any of our group companies).

1.3 We are committed to protecting your data on-line. This policy explains how we collect data, what we do with it and what controls you have.

1.4 By using the Site, you consent to the collection and use of data in accordance with this policy.

1.5 We reserve the right to change this policy from time to time by changing it on the Site. This policy was last updated on 12 December 2018.

2. Personal information we may collect from you

2.1 We may collect and process the following personal information about you:

information (such as your name, email address, postal address and telephone number) that you provide by completing forms on the Site, including if you register as a user of the Site, subscribe to any service, upload or submit any material via the Site, or request any information;

if you are customer of ours, information needed to verify your identify and the fact that you may hold a mortgage with us or a third party lender that we act as mortgage administrator for;

in connection with an account sign-in facility, your log-in and password details;

if you are a customer of ours, details of any payments made by you through the Site (but not the card details);

communications you send to us, for example to report a problem or to submit queries, concerns or

comments regarding the Site or its content; and

information from surveys, promotions and competitions that we may, from time to time, run on the Site, if you choose to respond to, or participate in, them.

2.2 You are under no obligation to provide any such information. However, if you should choose to withhold requested information, we may not be able to provide you with certain services (or register you as a user of this Site).

3. Uses made of your personal information

3.1 We use the personal information you provide to:

enable us to provide you with the services and information offered through the Site and which you request;

service any mortgage that you may hold with us or a third party lender that we act as mortgage administrator for including applying any payments made via this Site;

contact you requesting feedback on the Site and related issues;

send you information we think you may find useful, including information about our products and services, provided you have indicated that you do not object to being contacted for these purposes (or provided you have agreed that we may, in the case of electronic communications);

3.2 You can tell us not to contact you at any time by contacting us using the contacting us details in Section 10 (Queries and Complaints) of this policy.

4. Information about Cookies Including Third Party Cookies

4.1 The Site currently only uses session cookies and persistent cookies to store certain information. Cookies are text files that a website transfers to your computer's hard drive to store and sometimes track information about you. Session cookies are stored in temporary memory, also known as cache, and are not retained after the browser is closed. They typically will store information in the form of a session identification that does not personally identify the user. Persistent cookies are stored on your computer's hard drive for a set length of time, and although these cookies identify your computer, again, they do not themselves personally identify users.

4.2 Although cookies do identify a user's computer, they do not personally identify users and passwords are not stored in cookies. We use cookies to:

identify new and return visitors to the Site;

assist in improving and developing our products and services;

assist in improving and updating the Site;

audit the accessing of resources and downloading of data from the Site; and/or

administer the Site and assist in diagnosing technical problems

Cookies that we use

Cookie

Name

Type and Duration

Purpose

Acenden site cookie -acceptance for font size change

Fontsize

Persistent (2 hours fixed expiration)

Used for remembering the users font size

Acenden site cookie - acceptance for external sites

Ext_Cookies_Status

Persistent (2 years)

Used to maintain the user acceptance for third party sites

Acenden site cookie – used by Captcha security controls

Asp.Net_Session

Session (20 mins)

Essential cookie used for customer registration, resetting passwords and contacting us

Acenden site cookie – used for borrower authentication

Acenden.Borrower

Session (10 mins)

Used for remembering the unique session identifier of the logged in customer

Google Analytics

_utma

2 years from set/update

These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our site. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited.Click here for an overview of privacy at Google

_utmb

30 mins from set/update

_utmc

End of browser session

_utmz

6 months from set/update

4.3 Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but if you prefer, you can change your browser settings to prevent this, and your help screen or manual will tell you how to do this. You can learn more about cookies by visiting http://www.allaboutcookies.org/ which includes useful information on cookies and how to block cookies using different types of browser. However, you may not be able to take full advantage of the Site if you chose to block or restrict cookies.

4.4 Third Party Cookies
Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you follow a link, we are not responsible for the data protection and cookie policies of the other sites even if you access the links from our Website. We recommend that you read the policies of those websites.

4.5 How to withdraw your Consent to Cookies / removing Cookies
If you want to find out more about cookies and how to manage and delete cookies from your computer you may wish to visit www.allaboutcookies.org/

5. Information sharing

5.1 Payments are collected by our third party payment provider, currently Secure Trading Limited (www.securetrading.com) Secure Trading will collect payment on our behalf. We will pass your account details to Secure Trading including your mortgage account number, amount of payment, your name, address, telephone number and email address, in order to enable Secure Trading to identify you in order to process payments you wish to make.

5.2 In processing payments, Secure Trading will collect personal details from you including your card type, card number, issue number, security code, start and expiry dates. These details are held and processed securely by Secure Trading, and are not shared with us.

5.3 We may share your information with analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of our site. Where we do so, we will ensure that those providers handle any such data to strict contractual controls solely for the purposes given in this policy.

6. Security

6.1 We place great importance on the security of all personally identifiable information associated with our users. We have security measures in place to protect against the risk of loss, misuse or alteration of personal information under our control. Our security and data protection policies are periodically reviewed and enhanced as necessary and only authorised personnel have access to personal information. Whilst we cannot ensure or guarantee that loss, misuse or alteration of information will never occur, we use all reasonable efforts to prevent it.

6.2 You should bear in mind that submission of information over the internet is never entirely secure. We cannot guarantee the security of information you submit via the Site whilst it is in transit over the internet and any such submission is at your own risk.

6.3 It is advisable to close your browser when you have finished your user session. This helps ensure others do not access your personal information if you use a shared computer or a computer in a public place.

7. Storage of your information

Information submitted by you may be transferred by us to our other offices and/or to the third parties mentioned in the circumstances set out in section 5 above (see information sharing), which may be situated in locations outside the European Economic Area (EEA) and may be processed by staff operating in those locations. The countries concerned may not have similar data protection laws to the EEA. Where we transfer your information, we will take all reasonable steps to ensure that your data protection rights continue to be protected. By submitting information via the Site, you agree to this storing, processing and/or transfer.

8. Your details

You must ensure that any registration details you provide are accurate.

If you choose, or you are provided with, a log-on ID (such as a username and password or other identifier) as part of our security procedures, you must treat such information as confidential and must not reveal it to anyone else.

You are responsible for all activities that occur under your log-on ID and must notify us immediately of any unauthorised use or other security breach of which you become aware. We reserve the right to disable any log-on ID, at any time, if in our opinion you have failed to comply with any of the provisions of these terms and conditions, or if any details you provide for the purposes of registering as a user prove to be false.

Some browsers include a feature known as ‘Do Not Track’ or DNT. This allows you to indicate a preference that websites should not track you. However, whilst DNT is available in many browsers, websites are not required to recognise its request, so it may not always work. You can get help on how to use DNT in Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera.

Internet Explorer has a feature called Tracking Protection Lists which allows you to import a list of websites you want to block.

For more information on how and why data is processed about you, the reasons for doing so, and your rights relating to data protection please see the Fair Processing Notice, which is available on the Acenden website.

10.Queries and Complaints

If you have any questions about this policy or wish to complain, please contact: